Jimmy Fallon vs. Jay Leno: Actual Beef or Elaborate Inside Joke?

As the National Broadcasting Company attempts to pull off its complex transition of Late Night power, one would expect that all parties involved would do their best to play fair in the sandbox (at least publicly). However, when future Late Night host Jimmy Fallon appeared as a guest on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno last night, things didn't go exactly as planned. You see, in an apparent homage to a little seen webisode shot by Fallon's team, Jimmy purposely took a drink of water from Jay Leno's coffee mug  instead of his own  during their interview. Jay then doused Fallon with the remaining water in the mug, at which point members of the audience audibly gasped, unsure if what they just saw was something spontaneous or staged. While we're 95 percent confident that this bit was arranged in advance, we're 100 percent sure that the two completely lack any sense of comedic chemistry together, which explains why the audience reacted like this was an adversarial incident instead of something that just happens when two wacky buddies like this get together. Judge for yourself, after the jump.

Here's the video from last night's Tonight Show.

And here's the video in which the seeds of the probable inside joke were first sown:

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